


Past and Present

by SSFelton



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-11
Updated: 2015-07-11
Packaged: 2018-04-08 21:17:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4321071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SSFelton/pseuds/SSFelton
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set during and immediately after STXI.</p><p>Jocelyn reflects on her decisions regarding one Leonard H. McCoy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Past and Present

Her ex-husband was a drunk doctor with no time for a growing family or even just a wife. He was married to his job with no spare minute to think of Jocelyn or even Joanna.

Family days were never as important as saving lives.

Her bitterness during her marriage had eroded any ounce of love she'd once had for Dr. Leonard H. McCoy. It spawned a vindictive, malicious streak in her to seek divorce and take him for every dime and respect, honour, that he had. She'd wanted to leave him with nothing, not even a sense of self worth or even a friend in the Georgia town he'd grown up in.

She succeeded. She got his house, his cars, his horses, his practice, his money, his daughter and even his family. In the wake of his father's death, he'd been at his weakest. She'd taken full advantage, ruthlessly going after him with the wealth and connections her father provided. She'd gleefully left him with nothing but the clothes on his back.

He did try to put up a fight when she moved to cut off all his ties to Joanna but by then he'd been beyond weak and already disgraced. She'd already taken all his funds and no one in town wanted to help him. He'd spent months living as a bum and drinking away whatever money he had left in any local bar he could find. A southern gentleman rotting away.

The day the court order came, granting Jocelyn full custody of Joanna - relegating Leonard to vid calls at her discretion - she'd tracked him down at his latest watering hole just to laugh in his face. And Clay had been right there with him, making the blow significantly stronger.

The next day, without a word to anyone, he'd left town. Just disappeared. It had been a massive win for her animosity towards a man who was in no way, an upstanding citizen. He was drunk and degenerate and didn't deserve a place in Jocelyn's life.

But when 5 year old Joanna asked for her daddy, Jocelyn had stamped down guilt at never considering her daughter's love for a daddy that was hardly there. In time, she figured that Joanna would forget Leonard McCoy. Jocelyn told her daughter that she had a new daddy now, and married Clay a year after the divorce.

After the divorce, on sunny, slow days, she'd thought about Leonard many times. Sometimes she wondered how they came to be here - Jocelyn paying people to go against the best doctor in the South and Leonard disappearing entirely.

Sometimes she regretted.

But Clay had time for her and Joanna - and Leonard, after all, was just a drunk who was probably homeless somewhere.

On her wedding day to Clay, a friend mentioned that Leonard was spotted in San Francisco. In a Starfleet uniform. And patching up a young blond man at a bar.

Jocelyn had scoffed and thought no more of it - Leonard, who detested flying, was working with Starfleet? As if such a prestigious universal intuition - the one that policed Federation Space and by extension, the entirety of the known galaxy - would have anything to do with a drunk reprobate like Leonard McCoy.

But two years later, her best friend came bursting into her workplace shouting to turn on the news. Vulcan had been destroyed. And a lone ship, the _U.S.S. Enterprise_ , captained by James T. Kirk, was the only survivor of a massacre on a fleet of starships.

That in itself was worrying for people on Earth. However, things went straight to panic mode when people started thinking that Earth would be next. Starfleet didn't have time to come up with anything to calm anyone down - they had no more ships in the quadrant to help anyone. Earth was defenceless.

Mere minutes later, when communications cut all across town - and probably the planet (as theorized by some young people who worked for her) - it seemed that maybe Earth was being attacked too. Going the way of Vulcan.

But minutes after that, the _Enterprise_ saved the planet and disappeared with the attacking behemoth of an enemy ship. Hours later, well into the night when Earth was still trying to make sense of things, Starfleet issued a directive that Earth and the Federation were safe. That the enemy had been defeated by the captain and crew of the _Enterprise_.

For days while the ship was out of orbit and Starfleet (and by extension, the leaders of the Federation) was clamoured up on any news or explanations, the bio-pics of everyone assigned to the _Enterprise_ were broadcasted across all media stations. There was no way to know who lived or died, there was just the listing of all assigned.

Her heart almost stopped when Leonard McCoy's face flashed across the screen. She had been at work the first time, and Joanna at school. She'd heard, later, that Joanna had pointed and shouted "That's my daddy!"

He was a hero now. Not drunk and homeless at all. He'd earned a place unforgettably in Federation History.

That night, Clay had asked her if she regretted leaving Leonard. She'd said no. She'd lied. She did regret. He may be dead now an she'd made the little time they had into a horror story.

When reports from the _Enterprise_ finally began coming it, the death list was first and was broadcasted for hours. Jocelyn, who had kept Joanna home for the rest of the week, was relived to assure herself and her daughter that Leonard was not on that list.

The _Enterprise_ finally docked at Earth Space Station ten days after the attack on Vulcan. Every being on the planet, human or not, wanted a look at the crew - the people - who saved them, who saved the Federation. Though Starfleet tried to keep their personnel from curious eyes and cameras, news stations and paparazzi were waiting for a first look at the crew as they disembarked from shuttles.

Every planet in the Federation watched for the first sight of James T. Kirk, the famous Kelvin baby whose first breath and first cries were recorded and logged in history as his father died trying to save him and the Kelvin crew. James T. Kirk - the man who saved Earth.

He was bright and handsome, the last one off the ship and off the shuttle.

First came Ensign Chekov, a mere teenager with a pretty, baby face and innocent grin that made Joanna squeal in all her eight year old glory. He was accompanied by Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu, the pilot of the ship. Montgomery Scott, the Chief Engineer followed, looking a little forlorn - maybe at the thought of leaving his badly beaten ship. A beautiful woman with a wonderful figure and a short skirt that made Clay stare too interestedly, walked next to Scott. Nyota Uhura - Chief Communications Officer and the one whom Earth had been in contact with.

They were all so young. Scott wasn't even thirty-six, and he was the oldest of the skeleton crew of the fleet's flagship.

What came next though, took her breath away. Later, she was told by many friends that they all had the same stomach melting reaction. James T. Kirk, bright, golden, handsome with sparklingly brilliant blue eyes, stepped off his shuttle. He was tall with a physique that just screamed ladies man. He was everything a young hero, "a legend" as the newscasters called him, should be.

But what caused butterflies in her stomach was the picture he made with the two other men beside him. 3 handsome men all in one shot. Commander Spock of Vulcan, strict, stern-faced, and regal in his bearing, drew eyes to his tall frame and refined facial structure. But Leonard, her mind blanked as she stared at Leonard. He frowned at the reporters, his fingers clenched on the captain's shoulder. He looked younger than she'd seen him in years. He looked happier too, despite his fierce expression. Happier than he'd been with her for sure.

It made something in her chest twist sharply and made Clay look at her suspiciously.

These were the people responsible for saving Earth - the bridge crew devised and executed tactics that diverted Nero from Earth and killed him. And Lieutenant Commander Leonard McCoy was very much a part of that. A hero.

None of them smiled as they walked to their escort, protected by a multitude of Starfleet security officers. The Vulcan was impassive, the Golden Boy - for he looked too young to Captain anything - nodded solemnly at the crowds shouting his name, and Leonard's scowl was more pronounced than she'd ever seen.

Step for step, the three men walked until they were out of sight behind Starfleet unauthorized areas.

And in her arms, Joanna was very happily relaying that her daddy was alive and when could she see him? He was a hero! Her daddy helped save Earth!

That night, they had an uncomfortable dinner. Leonard was at Starfleet Headquarters but his presence pervaded the house. He may as well been sitting in a chair at their table. Joanna would not stop talking about her father. She chattered about everything she recalled and everything she knew of him and also Starfleet.

When she couldn't stand it any more - Clay's silence and Joanna's prattling of how her daddy _**must** _ be coming to see her - Jocelyn snapped and sent the girl to her room.

In the ensuing silence, she avoided looking at Clay - the man she'd left Leonard for. She was never supposed to feel like this. Leonard was supposed to remain a drunkard, too inebriated to practice medicine. Too beaten down and defeated, too much on the shit side of life to make it anywhere. Leaving him was supposed to be the best decision of her life.

Now he worked for Starfleet, the universal policing / peacekeeping / exploratory armada. The institution responsible for keeping all known worlds at peace. And he had a high rank. He had been one of the best doctors in the world a few years ago. That must not have changed; Starfleet was the best of the best.

"Do you regret it?" Clay's voice broke cold and hard on her contemplative silence. She looked up from her beans, startled and unguarded. "Do you regret divorcing him? Do you regret me? He's a hero now - brave, great, defying the odds. You used to love that."

That was why she'd left Leonard. He'd gotten boring. He'd been a well-paid hero saving lives, brash, bold and confident. Then he's lost it all and became a drunk with no time for his family. And Clay, Clay had been confident and bold too - a nice, cool diplomat with money and time. Privileged. He wasn't married to his job like Leonard.

"No," she replied to her husband. Because she hated Leonard, didn't she? Leaving her to raise their daughter by herself. She'd kicked him out of her life. She'd made sure he had no contact with Joanna. She'd wanted him to hurt and suffer.

And ultimately she'd lost. He was in Starfleet. It only took him three years and now, with all the power behind that universal institution, she knew he'd come for his daughter. He was a Federation hero now and there was nothing she and Clay could do anymore. Clay was a budding diplomat but Leonard was so much higher on the chain now that it was not even contemplable. Leonard loved and cherished Joanna like any father should; he wasn't going to stay away a minute more than he had to.

"Are you certain?" Clay asked, worried, envious.

"I took him to the cleaners for a reason. And then we used his money to buy this house and several others. I don't regret it. But I am grateful that Joanna didn't lose her father." And that was all she would say on the matter.

But her thoughts churned on what she'd let go. Especially in the ensuing days when all the vids, all the posters, all the news brandished the _Enterprise_ crew. Dr. Leonard McCoy was a Federation wide name, along with James T. Kirk and Spock of Vulcan : He'd smuggled Captain Kirk aboard, thereby saving the Enterprise and then the Federation. He'd done miraculous surgery to ensure Captain Christopher Pike would have a chance to walk again. He'd saved countless lives and on, and on, and on.

It was enough to make her jealous of him. And if, at lonely moments she wondered what it would be like to be his wife again, she kept that to herself.

The call she was anticipating came a week after the _Enterprise_ docked. He asked after Joanna and coldly accepted her thanks that he was alright. Then he announced that he was backed by the best Starfleet lawyers and wanted to revise the custody agreement. As soon as possible.

Sitting here in a cafe in Georgia while her neighbours eyed her discomfort and her empty table, she eyed the glass doors and waited for her ex-husband. Waited for a hero. She knew there was nothing she could do about the past and that no amount of money could sway any judge now. No one was going to refuse the _Enterprise_ crew anything.


End file.
